The 5th (Mostly) Annual Dionysus Awards

Ken Taylor
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Josh Landy
…except your intelligence. I’m Josh Landy.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor, we’re coming to you from the studios of KALW San Francisco.

Josh Landy
Continuing conversations that begin at philosophers corner on the Stanford campus where Ken teaches philosophy, and I direct the philosophy and literature initiative.

Ken Taylor
Today, it’s the fifth mostly annual Dionysus award show.

Josh Landy
The Dionysus Awards are presented to the most philosophically interesting movies of the past year.

Ken Taylor
We’ll talk to philosophers, film critics, and listeners like you to find out what movies in 2017 challenged our assumptions and made us think about things in new ways.

Josh Landy
So this isn’t your average award show here. We’re not going to tell you what high fashion designer made the outfits that we’re wearing today.

Ken Taylor
Yes, we’re not about glitz and glitter but about thought and reason and how they’re embodied in the movies.

Josh Landy
And we’re also going to show you our reasons and our thinking process, we’re going to debate our way to thinking which movies should win an award.

Ken Taylor
And we’re also going to take nominations from the floor, and they too are going to have to justify their choices.

Josh Landy
Of course, we can’t really talk about the movies of 2017 without talking about the movie industry in 2017, which was itself a big story and not for reasons that the industry can be proud of.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, our society is changing radically in response to the me to movement. But what about Hollywood? Has anything changed for women in Hollywood, either on the big screen itself, or behind the camera, we sent our Roving Philosophical Reporter, Liza Veale, to find out.

Liza Veale
There’s a lot of reasons to feel like this year movies by and about women finally broke out big time.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Something in me has always been there.

Liza Veale
The top three highest grossing movies were fronted by women. There was “Star Wars The Last Jedi”…

Star Wars: The Last Jedi
And I was awake. And I need help.

Liza Veale
Beauty and the Beast…

Beauty and the Beast
I’m not ready to have children. Maybe you haven’t met the wife met. It’s a small village get strong. I’ve met them all.

Liza Veale
And Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman
Is this what people do when there are no wars to fight?

Liza Veale
There are also huge hits like “Girls Trip,” “Lady Bird,” “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” and “I, Tonya.”

I, Tonya
America, they want someone to love someone.

Liza Veale
But if this is the beginning of the end of male hegemony in Hollywood, we’ve got a long way to go. Especially when it comes to who’s making the films.

Alison Wilmore
It’s a while that we’re having this battle.

Liza Veale
Here’s Alison Wilmore, critic with BuzzFeed News.

Alison Wilmore
But you know, when you look at the numbers, they’re they’re really just shocking still.

Liza Veale
Those numbers? Only 7% of the 1100 top-grossing movies last year were directed by women.

Alison Wilmore
You know, Greta Gerwig, is nominated for an Oscar for Best Director this year. She’s only the fifth woman to ever be nominated for Best Director. There’s only been one winner, you know, and that’s over decades and decades.

Liza Veale
This isn’t the first time that the top three highest grossing films were female fronted, it’s happened before… in 1956. Melissa Silverstein is the publisher of the website women and Hollywood. She says female representation in movies didn’t used to be such a problem… Until the 1970s, the industry exploded, which meant a lot more money was at stake, producers became more cautious. Movies became a lot more formulaic.

Melissa Silverstein
That was when the whole movie industry shifted. And that was when we saw really the huge decline in women.

Liza Veale
Add to that the fact that the market is now global.

Melissa Silverstein
The way that they’ve thought about international dollars is men, very few words, lots of action.

Taxi Driver
You talking to me?

Liza Veale
And you get a lot of very conservative bets about what kinds of movies people like. Silverstein says, people want what they’re familiar with, but we can broaden the familiar

Melissa Silverstein
If you’re fed a diet for so long like a McDonald’s diet, and that’s what you’ve been fed, you become addicted to it.

Liza Veale
Alison Wilmore says, we need to diversify the industry shot-callers who decide which movies to fund. Right now, it’s a limited group of white men.

Alison Wilmore
And that’s really I think what it comes down to is that if you look at a movie, and you don’t see commercial potential in it, because it doesn’t speak to you personally, that doesn’t mean it’s not going to speak to other people.

Liza Veale
So there are plenty of movies made by and about women that just don’t get bought and distributed to wide audiences. For example, there’s a movie coming out next year called “The Tale.” It’s about a woman dealing with sexual trauma. It was the most talked about movie at Sundance, but it was picked up by HBO.

Alison Wilmore
It’s going to bypass this whole world of theaters entirely. And you know, I think that that is a huge bummer for me. As someone who thought it was a very good movie and a really kind of old movie, both dramatically entertained. In terms of aesthetics,

Liza Veale
movies fall through at all stages of the process. And Melissa Silverstein says, that puts a lot of pressure on aspiring female directors

Melissa Silverstein
Because there still is such an issue of a lack,every movie is held up to a higher standard, and we really need that to end.

Liza Veale
It can feel like there’s undue attention on celebrities when women are sexualized and inhibited in all kinds of workplaces. But Alison Wilmore says, there’s more at stake than just the individuals in the industry. When it comes to movies…

Alison Wilmore
The accrued weight of these images tends to shape how you think of the world. And certainly like not being able to see yourself or your point of view reflected on screen ever. And like having one particular point of view be so dominant has meaning to people.

Liza Veale
For Philosophy Talk, I’m Liza Veale.

Josh Landy
Thanks so much for that report, Liza. I’m Josh Landy and I’m here with my Stanford colleague, Ken Taylor, talking about the most philosophically interesting movies of 2017 for our fifth mostly annual Dionysus award show.

Ken Taylor
So let’s get to our first award then, Josh. Now we’ve got two nominees for the most searing depiction of humankind’s tendency to dehumanize the other one’s a dark dark horror film, and the other is a very uplifting fairy tale the two movies get out and the shape of water. Let’s start with the shape of water. What do you think about the shape of water?

Josh Landy
I just think it’s glorious. I mean, so this is a movie about a love affair between a young woman and a swamp creature, which might sound absurd, but it is a fairy tale and it’s extremely gorgeously shot. It’s kind of a reversal of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. It’s set in 63. Yeah, something like that. And it and it’s unfolds this to make it into a movie about encounters with otherness.

The Shape of Water
The thing we keep in there is an affront. Do you know what in the front is Zelda? Something offensive. That’s right now should know I dragged that filthy thing. Out of the river muck in South America all the way here. And along the way, we didn’t get to like each other much.

Ken Taylor
You say it’s a fairy tale. It’s sort of like a beauty of the beast. Kind of fairy tale, something

Josh Landy
like that. But yeah, where the beast is benevolent.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, the beast is not malevolent. That’s certainly true. But the beast is treated pretty badly by most people in the movie and the Beast is regarded as well. It’s kind of not clear how they regard to be some road as an object of scientific curiosity. Some regarded as a potential weapon

The Shape of Water
for having an animal hop style or just keeping it tame oxygen osmosis and dockside exchange deal we got here son, his creature, sir, it can alternate between two entirely separate breathing mechanism. Mudskipper can do that? No. Look, you want to put a man in space. He’s gonna have to endure conditions the human body just wasn’t made for. This gives us an edge against the Soviets.

Josh Landy
I think that’s one of the strengths of movies it presents is first of all the gallery of kinds of otherness. Yeah, you have a woman with a disability. You have African Americans, you have a gay man all you know, in the 60s context, and a gallery responses to others, as you’re saying, right, all the way from hatred and fear, through curiosity and scientific interest and passion, excitement and love.

Ken Taylor
No, right. And their main character, Eliza is mute. And very lonely. See me? Yeah, very apart. Right and the Beast. Both of these people are kind of singular and apart. And I think that’s the kind of the basis of her initial sympathy.

Josh Landy
And I think the same goes for other characters for her, her friend, Zelda was African American, and her friend Giles, who’s gay. And so you see this same kind of isolation, it’s not a complete isolation, obviously, they have each other, I have no one.

Ken Taylor
And you are the only person that I can talk to. Now, whatever this thing is, you need it. So you just tell me what to do. I like the shape of water to but it has I think in the end, there’s a bit of cowardice moviemaking cowardice to it, because this alien other creature? What does he do that bespeaks his otherness? He looks funny. He lives in a different environment, but the only truly alien thing he does off putting things that he does is he eats a cat, right? He eats a kitty, right? And he Charles’s beloved cat eats a kitty. That’s terrible, right? But you don’t need a human being. I mean, here would be a courageous movie, a movie that did not try to make you love, recognize yourself in the alien other but still managed to get you to get beyond the recognition of this other alienness to something that would be a more courageous movie because then it wouldn’t be so namby pamby you know, It wouldn’t be so bad.

Josh Landy
Like, I’m not sure you’re giving the shape of water enough good, I think yes, it’s a fairy tale about otherness, and it has a fairytale villain with a blue even wearing a black hat, and it has a fairytale ending. But it knows it’s a fairy tale. Why do I say that? Because this this is great seamer that great scene where Giles is watching television, and something comes on the TV about civil rights. Swimming in front of them behind the events.

The Shape of Water
Oh dear. God changed that off. I do not want to see that. I do not want to see it.

Josh Landy
This is escapist. Right. This is a refusal to face the reality. Hollywood is bad. But wait a minute. That’s this movie. This movie is an escapist fantasy. So this is a movie that has a kind of a guilty conscience. Yeah, about its own life into fat. I

Ken Taylor
look, I tell you much braver movie is get out, right? Get out kind of inverts in a way what the shape of water does and inverts it subversively. And powerfully, I think because you we’ve got this interracial relationship, right? And this really cool seeming couple who have all these moments of intimacy and mutual support and, and its success in right to approving and cheering and then it gradually takes all of that away from us. It just unpeeled layer by layer. So then they go on.

Josh Landy
It’s brilliant, because it makes us think that the dramatic question is, are her parents racist?

Get Out
So how long has this been going on? For months, four months. Five months. She’s right. Attaboy, better get used to saying that. Please, I’m so sorry. Oh, yeah. I’m sorry. She’s right. I’m wrong. See, do you have an off button? Exhausting?

Ken Taylor
And then there’s this twist. Right, right, which you can kind of see coming, right. I didn’t kind of sort of maybe on, on reflect Sure, I can kind of see the subtle cues and an ends in such a searing note. And there’s an alternate ending. I don’t know if you know, this,

Josh Landy
maybe we could raise the same objection to the movie, it was actually released. Where, you know, Jordan Peele said that he decided, given the changed political environment.

Ken Taylor
Oh, that’s, that’s a lack of courage. So that’s what I’m saying, you know, you’ve

Josh Landy
got you got to be even. And so, but I think it’s really interesting. We got these two movies, both in my view, fantastic films. And both of them interesting, kind of, they kind of play with a kind of mixture of realism and fantasy, right, get out. It’s an extraordinarily powerful. Yeah, there’s so many subtleties. And there’s some

Ken Taylor
like non subtle things, which are kind of kind of like really broad kind of comedic almost like these white raises want these black guys because of I don’t know, their generic did their superiority, right? Because they’re superior that is their that so the white photographer wants Chris’s. Right. He wants his I want that I and let me ask what why? I think there’s a lot in there. Why the black eyes they don’t really have a reason why black people

The Shape of Water
nose, people want to change some people want to be stronger, faster, cooler, black Zinn fashion. Don’t please don’t let me into that. You know, I can give it what what color you are.

Ken Taylor
It’s not like there’s deep racism here. Right? There’s a utilitarian other rising

Josh Landy
because African Americans are more invisible in today’s society, right. So the police aren’t going to spend as great resources looking for them when they disappear. So you’re right. I think there’s just a convenience. That’s a holdover from slavery and Jim

Ken Taylor
Crow. Right, which is, again, a harsh thing. So I don’t I don’t know if you think there’s a contest, but I’m on the side of Get out. What do you think?

Josh Landy
Absolutely. I mean, look, for me, that was the movie of the year. Regarding philosophy or no philosophy. Get out was the movie.

Ken Taylor
Okay. So we’re agreed. The 2017 Dionysus award for the most searing depiction of humankind’s tendency to denigrate the other goes to get out.

Get Out
Good to see no brother around here. Yes, of course it is.

Ken Taylor
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. It’s our fifth annual Dionysus award show coming

Josh Landy
up. We’ll take some listener nominations. And Kevin I will announce diagnosis winners in the categories of richest investigation of the drivers of history. And most cinematically, transgressive and philosophically absurdist film,

Ken Taylor
Dionysus award winners plus nominations From the floor, and philosophy talking continues.

Josh Landy
Welcome back, I’m Josh Laddie and you’re listening to Philosophy Talk. It’s our annual Dionysus award show.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. We’re talking about the movies of 2017. That challenged our assumptions and made us think about things in new ways. We’re joined

Josh Landy
by Tim Sika, president of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle. He’s also the host writer and producer of celluloid dreams on ks JS in San Jose, California. And he’s got some nominees for the most cinematically transgressive and philosophically absurdist film of the year. Welcome back to Philosophy Talk, Tim.

Tim Sika
It’s great being back with you guys. I love your show.

Ken Taylor
Well, thanks a lot. So look, Tim, you recommended a bunch of movies to us. And we picked out two to talk to you about and I think these two movies are perhaps the two most at least two of the most divisive movies of the year in terms of people either love them or hate them. The one movie is ghost story. And the other is mother exclamation mark. Let’s start with a ghost story. Why should we be talking about that movie?

Tim Sika
For ghost stories, simple is the word I think that best describes this movie. And it takes that description of simple and I think raises it to the level of art, which is for the most part, the movie I should probably say it’s about it’s about this guy who’s played by Casey Affleck who dies in a car accident. And he comes back as a ghost hovering about all that he has left behind, including specifically his wife played by Rooney Mara. Scared I think it’s a quintessential example of less is more I think this looks like it might be the lowest budget movie of the year in that most of it takes place in one place, and at most a few locations with only a few actors and someone underneath a sheet. That’s it.

Josh Landy
I’m not sure I think less is less than the case of this. If you love watching paint dry, I think this may well be the movie for you. I mean, seven minutes of a character eating a pie.

Tim Sika
I think it’s bold in that regard. I mean, stylistically, I think there are what 1012 minute takes of the most simple acts of person, as you mentioned, eating a pie, a couple making love somebody grieving simple acts that by all right should be boring to watch, I will judge you think they’re boring. But in this movie, I couldn’t take my eyes off of the scenes, even though really nothing saved for the action is happening. So stylistically, I thought it was bold. I thought it was courageous. I thought it took risks. What was interesting to me is that usually movies would explore the person that is alive, their loss, like, you know, what am I going to do, but this sort of took a reverse twist on that and looked at it from the standpoint of a spirit, you know, and then it asks, like, what kind of an impact if any do we have on the world that we lived in and that we participated in? And is that impact felt by anyone or anything when we die? You know, it’s about legacy. And that was it was interesting.

Ken Taylor
I think it was about a lot of things. I mean, what I, there’s hardly any dialogue in it, and moreover, virtually silent. And moreover, the dialogue that there is in it, there was a little bit before the husband dies, but most of the dialogue that you hear you hear in muffled tones, because the ghost is kind of hearing it. And that pie eating scene. I don’t think there’s music with that pie. Is there music with

Josh Landy
them? Why would they have anything to capture your attention,

Ken Taylor
because he is seeing up close his wife’s grief at his passing. And that scene captures that grief very powerfully. She comes home from his work, she brings the pie home from the way she starts eating that bite and she eats more of that pie. She collapses onto the floor keeping eating the pie. It shows you like this is what grief is like and he’s seeing up close the grief of another he’s I think that’s I don’t know, I think that’s really effective.

Josh Landy
In in a ghost story, the redeeming feature for me if there is one is the moment of which the movie starts playing with time. And I think that becomes interesting. I’m not convinced that the thematic of the ghost wanting to have an influence in the outdoors is particularly original. We’ve seen that in many movies, right? Oh,

Tim Sika
yeah. I mean, even the symbol it was a cliche, but I thought the way all those elements were combined. I thought it was different. I wouldn’t what other movie Have you seen like a ghost?

Ken Taylor
I know. I agree with you, Tim that this movie is bold. I think it’s transgressive. That’s why Josh is rejecting it because it is so transgressive movie conventions. Yeah, but it’s transgressive. Not out of incompetence, but out of bold directorial decision.

Josh Landy
I disagree. I mean, there plenty of movie thing ghadar I mean, there’s plenty To the movies out there that also don’t fit the Hollywood mold. Absolutely. So there are plenty of transgressive movies in that sense, but they’re giving you something.

Ken Taylor
Okay, let’s think about another transgressive movie, Mother exclamation point. I don’t know what you’re supposed to do with the exclamation mark, what do you think of that movie?

Tim Sika
I load this movie when I saw it. I remember being hit up when it was a it was a critic screening. It was before any word had gotten out about the movie. And the publicist said, you know, we need to know your immediate reaction. And I said, nasty, misogynistic, disgusting, what other adjectives

Josh Landy
if you know, if you like the spectacle about a woman being psychologically tormented for two straight hours,

Ken Taylor
he’s never loved me. He just loves you every day this movie mother is transgressive as any movie could possibly be. It says, oh, yeah, I’m gonna tell you this story of this poet who’s having trouble writing and his devoted wife, who is his muse, and they’re in this house, that she helped rebuild it as restoring and it’s a lovely place and he’s struggling and but he’s really famous people love his work, and innocent seeming things happen. But those innocent seeming things are inverted and not innocent. And they’re disturbing, and they get more disturbing, and they get more disturbing, and they get more disturbing. And that whole thing is like a Journey Into Darkness is the same director who made one of my favorite movies of all time, Requiem for a Dream.

Tim Sika
Yeah, and black swan song, which also divided people, right.

Ken Taylor
So this is a really divisive movie. It’s a extraordinarily ambitious movie. It’s an extraordinarily unrelenting movie. I think that’s high art. If you pull that off with a villain, I think this is done with great skill. Do you? Are you supposed to take pleasure in it? That would be an odd thing to do. But I used to post to be somehow gripped by it. Yes, I think you are.

Mother!
I feel sorry. We’re both sorry. I was telling her the story just fell. We’ll search and find it. I promise.

Josh Landy
Look, I grant you the technical sophistication. Absolutely beautiful. And I grant you’re absolutely the power of these acting performances. But is it really complex? I don’t think so. I think that’s my problem, that this is really just a movie on one note. It’s as you said, Can its unrelenting mother is just an unrelenting cavalcade of psychological torment inflicted upon the central character. I’m not convinced that this movie does it in a particularly interesting way to be honest, what

Ken Taylor
do you think to? Well,

Tim Sika
I don’t know. You know, to me, the movie played and this is why I hated it. It played like a like a whiny rant of a narcissistic artist who felt misunderstood, never acknowledged and underappreciated and that everyone was to blame for his shortcomings and failures and feelings of insecurity except the artist himself. And if it were anybody’s fault, it was clearly the wives right. But the filmmaker Darren Aronofsky claimed that the film was a metaphor, and this is what he was going for, for the destruction of the planet of the environment and of Mother Earth.

Ken Taylor
I do you think it’s ultimately about a kind of destructiveness, but I think it’s I thought it was about the destructiveness of the artistic impulse, right? I mean, one does his artistic impulse, and he’s represented as a great poet. Right? And when he finally writes his new poem, it brings everybody to tears, and everybody does it at all is there to stop. And this is this wild party that started as awake and turns into a party and then there’s killers. It’s all crazy stuff in my mother.

Josh Landy
Yeah, I mean, that’s fine. But the way in which has manifested the movie has a real arbitrariness to it. And I won notice, you know, for me, this is a movie for masochists made by status.

Mother!
Please, please, we need to forgive them. We need to forgive them.

Josh Landy
Maybe we can give mother a golden philosophical raspberry,

Ken Taylor
okay. The 2017 Golden Raspberry for the most ambitious transgressive, but ultimately failed philosophical movie of the year of ghosts new mother, and this 2017 Dionysus award, somewhat reluctantly given for the most philosophically ambitious, simple minded but transgressive and divisive movie of the year goes do

Josh Landy
a ghost story shouldn’t

A Ghost Story
be so hard to talk about this Can we talk tomorrow? Jamie,

Ken Taylor
you’re listening to Philosophy Talk, we’re giving out our annual diagnosis awards for the most philosophically compelling movies of 2017.

Josh Landy
Last August can talk to our film blogger Leslie Francis, about portrayals of heroism in some of the summer blockbusters that got us thinking about two movies in particular, don’t cook, and the darkest hour movies that ask the question, who are the real drivers of history, the great leader, or the soldier at the front? Leslie Francis joins us again now to help us decide which either of these movies deserves a diagnosis award? Leslie, welcome back to Philosophy Talk.

Leslie Francis
Thank you. And it’s great to be here.

Ken Taylor
We’re going to talk about Dunkirk and the darkest hour, tell Josh and me what you thought of those two movies. And which did you like more?

Leslie Francis
Well, so they’re both exciting. They’re both really well made movies. One is about the heroism of the little guy. One is about the heroism of the big guy. And as adventure movies, they’re both fantastic there differently, Finn. Fantastic. Dunkirk how it uses time and visuals is absolutely stunning. The Darkest Hour how it uses the parliamentary intrigue, the image of Churchill and the little guy in London. That’s terrific.

Josh Landy
Yeah, that’s that’s one of the things that struck me about Dunkirk, that you have three stories happening on three different timelines. So you have an hour in the life of a pilot, you have a day in the life of a small boat owner, and a weekend the life of soldiers on the beach. And that’s, that’s quite nice. I mean, sort of implies that wars actually happen on different timescales, although the things that are important in wars happening different.

Ken Taylor
Oh, that’s a really nice observation. I hadn’t really thought about that part of Dunkirk. But all those share all those points of view that you should talk about, share that there. They’re not at all from the big global political situation. I mean, I think the word German is pronounced exactly once, right? Because the Dutch guy in the boat, there’s a Dutch guy in a boat, and they say, Are you a crowd? He’s a German spy? Up Tufte? Have you noticed the hasn’t said a word? Shut off? Tell him. Yeah. Tell me give false. Germany is referred to the the, as the enemy, and the enemy has never named. And moreover, the word Hitler is is never uttered, never once. So it’s really, really focused on that beach. And what’s happening on that beach and it could be any beach at any war at any time. And

Josh Landy
it’s not just that Dunkirk isn’t about Churchill. It’s also not about Hitler. Right. It’s not about the important single individual, whether positive or negative, right?

Leslie Francis
Oh, remember that at the very end of Dunkirk. There is the read of the speech from Churchill, which suddenly sets it in the context of what’s happening,

Ken Taylor
right. It’s striking that both movies and with Churchill speech, with Gary Oldman giving that speech, he’s so sad. It’s so stirring when He delivers it. And the soldier just quietly reading that speech on a bench, we

Dunkirk
shall defend our Island wherever the cost may be. For fighting the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds for fighting the fields and

The Darkest Hour
in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never forget.

Josh Landy
Because there was a third movie about Churchill last year as though two weren’t enough. I

Ken Taylor
don’t actually think them darkest hour just plainly presents Churchill as just an unmixed great man, right? He’s Macura. No, that’s right. He’s material he drinks all the time. He doesn’t even understand what he’s facing. That is he thinks this isn’t a real invasion.

The Darkest Hour
Not a real invasion. No. As long as he and crews are not supported by infantry units, they are merely stuck on a map, because the tech crews cannot support themselves. No, I refuse to see in this spectacular raid of the German tank. I really knew

Ken Taylor
he does not understand the speed of the German army, which the Brits were not prepared for, which that’s

Leslie Francis
right. He doesn’t understand the lack of preparedness of Britain. And he also doesn’t understand the extent to which the decisions that were made for appeasement had actually bought Britain some time, but maybe not quite enough time.

Ken Taylor
The Halifax Chamberlain side is actually powerfully presented because they they think, what you have to think that Britain is about to lose its entire army. Right? And, and the Germans are going to invade Britain, and they are not going to be able to stop them. And if they don’t do something, make some concession. They just a conquered people. Right. So what do we do? And they keep saying, Look, Churchill, you got to come to terms with this guy. And there’s that’s not necessarily thought,

Leslie Francis
No, it’s not a silly thought. And there was this huge history of Churchill as being a loose cannon.

Josh Landy
Right. I mean, he’s reputation was not at that point of reputation as a successful and there are more

Ken Taylor
there’s a nicer sequence of scenes in the movie, when he’s a name Prime Minister. People are whispering in the hallways, Oh, he did this. He did that he did not like this guy’s a disaster. But he was right about Hitler.

Leslie Francis
Yes. If you do believe something about what the role of an individual can be in history, particularly with his use of words and his ability to inspire, Churchill probably made a critical difference to whether Britain fell,

Unknown Speaker
by way amo

The Darkest Hour
MassBay love Whoo. I thought given a Mitch tidbit just before we nerd, you cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its

Ken Taylor
mouth. So I want to make sure you guys fish or cut bait here. If you had to give a diagnosis award to a lot of these two movies, or you could say I’m going to give it to either, but I want you to justify your choice of Dionysus award 2x, two y or denied. So Lesley, let’s start with you.

Leslie Francis
So I would give it to Dunkirk, precisely for the reason Josh developed a little while ago, the way Dunkirk layers, the way war appears in the lives of people at different levels, the ultimate speech and the British people and suddenly bringing it back into the context of the war that was going to go on.

Ken Taylor
Okay, so just I want you to give me your best case, that darkest hour, deserves a diagnosis.

Josh Landy
Okay. One reason I think that darkest hour appeals to people in this particular moment, is that I think we have an histologia, whether mistaken or otherwise, for a time in which there was a strong, charismatic leader who could actually lead the fight against the forces of darkness. And, you know, this is not well, you don’t have to talk about the current situation in this country. But you think about the situation in Britain today around Brexit just feels as though there’s a complete leadership vacuum. So one of the things I think that darkest hour does really well, is present a picture of how an individual is actually not in any way perfect. a deeply flawed individual, can nonetheless rise to the occasion, and provide a kind of moral and charismatic inspiringly moral leadership for a nation that desperately needs it.

Ken Taylor
I think, you know, what, neither of these movies on its own is like gets it completely right. Dunkirk to decontextualize it, I mean, it’s important minute war is important, but minute in this war, it’s just really, really important not to lose the context. And and the darkest hour tries to do this thing about how Churchill connected to the British people’s went over the heads of his own party and reached out to the people and drew inspiration from them. But it does it in such a ham fisted way. The scenes of Churchill driving through the crowds and these people, the British people going about that thing with determination and then that absurd underground scene, that’s just absurd, okay, but here’s, here’s what you could do on a philosophy movie. You can make the mereological some, take any two things and combine them and you’ll get a new thing. So I want to give a diagnosis award for the British investigation of the drivers of history to the mereological some of Dunkirk and darkest out

The Darkest Hour
which I do not believe this island or large

Dunkirk
or large part of it was subjugated and starving. No Empire beyond the seas, Island guarded by

The Darkest Hour
and guarded by the British fleet

Dunkirk
carry on the struggle until in God’s good time,

The Darkest Hour
then you will power we all let’s power, steps for rescue and the

Dunkirk
liberation of the world.

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. We’re taking a philosophical look at the movies of 2017 for our fifth annual Dionysus award show.

Ken Taylor
In our next segment, we’ll Take nominations from our listeners. And we’ll consider last year sequel to one of the most philosophically satisfying science fiction movies ever made

Josh Landy
nominations from the floor and so much more. When Philosophy Talk continues.

It’s the fifth mostly annual Dionysus awards. I’m Josh Landy and this is Philosophy Talk, that program that questions everything

Ken Taylor
except your intelligence. I’m Ken Taylor, and we’re talking about the most philosophically compelling movies of 2017.

Josh Landy
We’re joined now by Joshua Dannenberg, our colleague from the Stanford philosophy department. juror has been thinking about last year sequel to our one of our favorite philosophical movies of all time, Blade Runner. Welcome back to Philosophy Talk jar.

Jorah Dannenberg
Thank you very much. No, Dora,

Ken Taylor
I regard the original Blade Runner as perhaps the or maybe the second best, but at least one of the two best science fiction movies of all time. And in terms of philosophically interesting science fiction, I think it’s almost perfect. Especially the director’s cut. So here’s the question. Yeah, could a sequel? I mean, sequels usually pale in comparison to the original? Could a sequel possibly live up to that original? Do you think this does?

Jorah Dannenberg
I think the sequel does a pretty good job of at least getting very close.

Josh Landy
So tell us about the core of Blade Runners philosophy, right, both the original and the sequel. So what’s got what are the questions?

Jorah Dannenberg
Yeah. So here are two things about the first Blade Runner. One. There’s this question about mortality and confronting one’s own mortality and confronting the rationale for it and some sense if there is to be a rationale. And two, there’s this question of whether or not empathy is the key to being a human being in the morally important way. In the second movie in Blade Runner 2049. Mortality is replaced by the question of birth and yeah, and Genesis, right. So so now the kind of driving plot point is that there, we now learn that at least one of the replicants has been able to reproduce itself. And both the sort of resistance movement among the replicants and the police in the police captain seem to agree that if it gets out that the replicants could replicate themselves, this would be the end of the wall that divides I’d replicant and

Blade Runner: 2049
anything else? I burned everything else, then what’s this? What’s that day? Is that a birthday? Is that a death day? I don’t know. Yeah. Am I the only one that can see the sunrise here? This breaks the world K?

Josh Landy
It sounds like this movie is to the earlier Blade Runner as Hannah Arendt is to Heidegger, right. So it’s replacing the talent in the mortality with natality.

Ken Taylor
Yeah,

Jorah Dannenberg
and here’s the second thing different instead of empathy, it’s freewill. Right? So the test in the second right film in Blade Runner 2049 seems to be a test for something like the capacity for freedom. And in fact, the thing that now makes it okay to have the replicants around is supposedly that they’ve been made obedient. That is, their capacity for free choice, or some aspect of their capacity for free choice has been taken away. Now, I happen to think if you watch the film closely at all, this doesn’t hold up. No, it doesn’t, at all replicates. In fact, one of the ways in which it’s remarkable is that the replicants lie to their superior.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, but I want to go back to the birth thing, because I think this is really important, because because now the replicant, I’m just replicated, but they can replicate themselves. They’re a self replicating. And now because they can form a collectivity. They’re like a people that potentially has a history. They’re not just added by the whim of somebody else. They grow themselves like a human community, and they can become not just a rebellious force, like oh, the machines are turning against us, but like people turning against their oppressors and the people and one can sacrifice themselves for the greater good of the species that they know have reason to believe continue, and that changes their whole moral frame.

Blade Runner: 2049
The ancient models because the entire endeavor, a bad name. What a gift, don’t you think? From Mr. Wallace to the world the outer colonies would never have flourished, not bought Tyrrell, revivified the technology, to say the least of what we do.

Josh Landy
So this was a great year for film 2017. So we had, among other things, Blade Runner 2049. And the shape of water in both of these movies asked the question, what it is to be a human, as opposed to a replicant or as opposed to a monster. Is it about language use? Is it about the capacity for morality? Do you think there’s something about the present moment that is causing people to ask this question, and that these beautiful, powerful pointed ways that those two movies are doing

Jorah Dannenberg
I think there’s this demand to ask, What if anything, could justify treating certain beings in ways that make them systematically subordinate? Right. And part of the power of the film, I think, especially 2049, is that there’s at least one character in the film who suggests that the answer to this is that there’s, there’s no real justification for it. It’s just something that we will find a way to do if we need to do it. Did it never

Blade Runner: 2049
occurred to you, that’s why you were summoned in the first place. Designed to do nothing short of fall for her right then and there. All to make that single, perfect specimen. That is, if you were designed,

Ken Taylor
but I think there’s something deeper though, you know, slavery would be a really nice thing if you could design a person or creature that had all these human like capacities, but was willing to be slayed, I think all these kinds of movies, not the shape of water, but all these robot Android all they all are asking themselves, okay, in the total package of capacities that humans have, how could we get like, just enough of the package that they were agents, and they could do all these things, and they can reason but they would not have this moral consider

Josh Landy
ability, I guess, get alcohols? And

Ken Taylor
yeah, how could we get just enough of that packet? Right. And, and I think most of these movies are telling us, you know, what, as we get further and further advanced with AI, and all this sort of stuff in bioengineering, we’re gonna come right up against that question. And the hopeful answer is no, there’s, you know, if you get some of the package, you’re gonna get all of the package. The dystopian answer is, yeah, there’s a way to do this. But you know, you might not find the precise borderline.

Jorah Dannenberg
Well, there’s a way in which actually, I want to suggest that there’s a different dystopian answer. No, it all comes as a package. But human beings are very good at blinding themselves to the way in which the very thing that might make someone suitable as a slave also makes them deserving of better treatment, right. And so we find ways to justify the treatment or other ways to blind ourselves to the way in which these things are coming as a package. Okay,

Ken Taylor
so Josh, it’s time to fish or cut bait, it’s time to decide whether we’re going to get Blade Runner 2049, a Dionysus award for being the best something of 2017. But here’s my own standard, it has to justify itself on its own merit. It doesn’t get to bask in the glory of its father. Yeah,

Josh Landy
I mean, look, this one is a little slower, and, you know, perhaps as a couple of flaws, but it’s beautiful, and that this movie is doing something different from the original, right? It’s taking the stakes of the original movie and raising them. And so yeah, I’m going to say yes, this is worthy of a dinosaur.

Ken Taylor
So the 2017 Dionysus award, for the best not necessarily needed, but still deserving science fiction philosophical movie goes through

Josh Landy
Blade Runner 2049.

Blade Runner: 2049
Why? Who am I to you? Go meet your daughter,

Josh Landy
you’re listening to philosophy talks Dionysus awards for the most philosophically compelling movies of 2017. And it’s

Ken Taylor
time for nominations from the floor. Sun in Palo Alto. Welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Sun
Thank you.

Ken Taylor
So what’s your nomination from the floor?

Sun
So I’m nominating Star Wars The Last Jedi you might be a little bit skeptical. But the whole concept of actually the way the Jedi way as he does come from powers, philosophy. So in Taoism, there’s the in and the Yang. And those create a balance in the world, the dark and the light side. They’re not necessarily evil and good because they’re considered to be important. Many ways in the introduction balance is very important.

Josh Landy
I’ve always been curious about this in Star Wars because on the one hand, I agree with you and I think that’s one of the subtleties of Star Wars. The the the governing premises supposed to be in fact, you need a balance between light side and dark side. On the other hand, the movies seem to be about the necessity for the light side, so to speak to defeat. The dark side, says an inconsistency. No,

Ken Taylor
no, no, no, I think I mean, I think the power in the universe, the force is somehow fundamental power in the universe. The Jedi knew how to channel this power, but one lives on the knife’s edge. Right when one gets this power, one gets great power, and one gets in touch with something really deep and fun. The metal that binds all things together and the ability to do whatever they do with the force be guided by it manipulate it, if they live on the knife’s edge, because because you notice that almost everybody who tries to train some Jedi fails, Luke fails

Sun
to fail to Yeah, Yoda fair.

Ken Taylor
I mean, they fail good really, really hard.

Sun
This is not going to go away you think

Ken Taylor
I won. But here’s my question for you, son. There are a lot of these Star Wars movies. And there’s one that I really admire. That’s the Empire Strikes Back. And you know, I think in comparison to the Empire Strikes Back, this is kind of like a retelling because the rebel forces are scattered, and it was his vision. But it just seems to me, it doesn’t even measure up to its own predecessor.

Sun
So one of the tropes I think that was consistent throughout the franchise, but maybe not really follow through in this movie is kind of the very clear line between the good and the bad. Most of the characters, the good guys are good, because they’re able to not be tempted into going to the dark side, right. But in this movie, I think it’s a little bit different, because, well, first of all, um, Snoke, the evil Sith Lord, he dies, like, midway in the movie, and people are shocked. And I think this was actually an active choice by the filmmakers to indicate that they they were really getting away from having that character who is the symbol of all evil, I think they want to show that perhaps with Kylo Ren the evil wasn’t that simple, evil, realistic evil had was definitely just a mixture of evil and good and you you have hold that perhaps Kylo Ren is also good, and he’s definitely more relatable. He has these vulnerabilities that we don’t see in Sith Lords because they seem like oh my god, they got everything together, they are just pure evil. We also have Ray, the main character, and she, um, in that kind of weird kind of dream that she experiences, she literally just go straight into the dark side. Like, darkness. And something else. But Ray isn’t like the conventional good characters who are never tempted to dark side, she literally flirts with the dark side by having that weird connection with Kylo Ren. Right. And so again, we have two characters Kylo Ren and Rey, who are lingering in some boundary and don’t do not show themselves to be either at the very edge of the spectrum.

Josh Landy
I agree with you. I think it’s a really interesting feature of this movie and a departure from the previous installments in this franchise is that it’s more morally complex, but But I also think there’s a really interesting question it raises about whether we even want Jedi in the first place. Where Where, where is progressive action really going to come from? Is it going to come from these charismatic elite figures who have special powers? Or is it going to come from from the grassroots isn’t gonna come from people like Ray, you know, Ray, of course, get some training. But do we even want Jedi?

Ken Taylor
But see, that’s the continuing trope, because Luke Skywalker, he has the forces power, Darth Vader says the force is powerful within you, Luke, but you’re not a Jedi yet. Right? And so the recurring thing throughout the franchise is that you know, the path to the full Jedi ness is long and hard. Everybody wants to take a shortcut. And the thing that puts Luke Skywalker in danger is that he wants to take a shortcut and your rights on that Ray flirts with the dark side. That may be I mean, the franchise philosophy would say that may be her undoing, she doesn’t have the discipline to follow the long, slow, torturous path of becoming a full Jedi. So I don’t know. I do agree it’s a more morally complicated universe. In the Star Wars The Last Jedi. I do agree it’s more morally complicated. I don’t know. It still seems to me, it’s so much of a retelling. And you are convincing me that there’s more added elements son than there were in the original Star Wars. But I would have never given the original Star Wars not even the Empire Strikes Back if we were doing a diagnosis awards back in the I would never given the diagnosis award. So it’s good. I would have you would have Yeah, I would. Okay, I’ve got an idea. The diagnosis award for the best Star Wars movie of 2017 goes to

Josh Landy
Star Wars The Last Jedi.

Ken Taylor
Okay, thanks a lot for calling into. Okay, bye bye.

Josh Landy
If you’ve got a diagnosis worthy movie in 2017, that wasn’t just On today’s show and maybe wasn’t featured on one of those alternative award shows, we’d love to hear from you. Send your nominees to comments at Philosophy Talk or G and we may feature it on the blog.

Ken Taylor
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of KALW local public radio San Francisco and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University. Copyright 2018. Our executive producers are David Demarest and Matt Martin. The senior producer is Devon Strolovitch. Laura Maguire is our Director of Research. Cindy Prince Baum is our Director of Marketing.

Josh Landy
Thanks also to Merle Kessler, Angela Johnston, and Collin Peden.

Ken Taylor
Support for Philosophy Talk comes from various groups at Stanford University. And from the partners that are online community of thinkers.

Josh Landy
The views expressed or mis expressed in this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or other funders, not even when they’re true and reasonable. The conversation continues on our website Philosophy Talk dot o RG G or you too can become a partner in our community of thinkers.

Ken Taylor
I’m Josh Landy. And I’m Ken Taylor. Thank you for listening, and thank you for thinking